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asksythe · 1 year

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Dead languages and maybe Wei Ying is long-lost royalty

Today I had a discussion with @pakhnokh regarding why Wei Wuxian didn’t know the deeper layer of meaning behind the Lan forehead band. It was a long discussion on Twitter, so I figured I should just make a post here and leave this information out for anyone who might find it useful.

To start off: The reason why Wei Ying didn't know the deeper layer of meaning of the Lan forehead band was in the book. But it was written in a very opaque way, in one single throw-away line. In the book, when Wei Ying had to copy the Lan rules, he specifically complained that the rules were written in seal script.

The Useless Ye Olde’ Script

Seal script is a script that predated traditional Mandarin. It was infamous for being needlessly complex and having dozens, if not hundreds different dialects and writing methods. Some forms of seal script were entirely different languages altogether. When Qin Shi Huang united ancient China, he burned a lot of books and forced people to adopt a standard way to write, thus cementing traditional Mandarin as a singular language that is still used today, 2000 years after. A way to visualize how complex seal script was, is that there were 22 different ways to write the word 'sword'.

That is how mind-bogglingly complex it was. And worse, it was the source of much conflict in ancient times. To explain it simply, it was supposed to be one language. But if people could not even agree on how to write the same word, then how could they agree on more important things and cease warring against each other?

Language standardization was one of Qin Shi Huang’s greatest achievements, if not the greatest, as it laid the foundation for more peace and eventual unification in later dynasties.

This topic was made into an Academy Award-nominated movie, Hero by Zhang Yimou in 2002.

(the word ‘sword’ that Qin Shi Huang decided on, thus wiping out the other 20+ ways to write the same word)

Dating Mo Dao Zu Shi in real history (or, Wei Ying might actually be long-lost royalty)

In a very interesting turn of events, MXTX has confirmed in her latest interview in Subaru magazine, that the events of MDZS happened during Wei Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties (commonly referred to as the Six Dynasties era by English-speaking historians, even though these two don’t perfectly line up).

Yes, the same Wei 魏 in Wei Ying 魏婴, Wei Wuxian 魏无羡.

So the events in MDZS took place in the era immediately after the fall of the Qin dynasty (caused by Qin Shi Huang’s death and his sons not being able to measure up). Therefore, Wei Ying’s generation is in a time after the language has standardized into a single form.

The Lan rules, at least the first set and the meaning of the forehead band, were written about 500 years before Wei Ying’s generation, at the founding of House Lan. So that would put it squarely in the pre-Qin, pre-lingual-standardization era.

So by Wei Ying’s time, the Lan rules were essentially written in a dead, kinda useless, and very very hard-to-read-because-it-has-some-hundred-different-dialect language.

That’s on top of the fact that it was probably written in the highest level of 书面语 shumianyu (written language) possible. I.e. extremely condensed and truncated (with zero punctuation).

So the Lan rules are more or less a very thick law book of a different nation written in the strictest, most condensed dead language that is in no way, shape, or form still in practical use for Wei Ying (and most other people not Lan). Do you feel like reading it? I don’t.

And that is why Wei Ying never figured out the original meaning of the forehead band despite having copied the rules hundreds of times (first day in class, he was already punished and sentenced to copying the rules 100 times by Lan Qiren).

Because he was just copying the words without really reading them. This was mentioned when Wei Ying asked Lan Wangji the meaning of the Lan forehead band, and Lan Wangji replied with, you have copied the rules so many times and you still don’t know?

But isn’t Wei Ying really well-read and smart, and what about the Wen book?

1/ Wei Ying is smart and well-read. There was one throw-away line in the book that mentioned his having read all the books available to him in Lotus Pier, and that he had read all kinds of trivia (including the Thousand Sores and Hundred Holes curse that got put on Jin Zixun). But it was also stated that he favored practical things or things that interested him. Lan rules in dead, extremely hard to read language are… well… yeah…

There was never any mention in canon where he remembered specific Lan rules unless it was literally beaten into him by teenage Lan Wangji.

2/ In the novel, the Lan rules are singled out as the only materials written in seal script. The Wen books were standard issued to everyone who took part in the Wen education camp. So the chance that it was written in seal script is low to none.

Wei Ying is not the only person who doesn’t know the meaning of the Lan forehead band

Jiang Cheng didn't know either. Jin Ling didn't know either. During the Wen archery competition, when Wei Ying pulled off Lan Wangji's forehead band, he did ask Jiang Cheng what the hell was that, when Lan Wangji and other Lan members reacted like he did something shameful. Jiang Cheng replied with, how the hell would I know? Their house has so many rules. Just stop poking them.

Jin Ling didn't know until the other Lan teenagers told him. The only characters who know this in canon are all members of Lan house. The impression that Wei Ying is the only one who doesn't know is 100 percent fanon. Keep in mind both Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling are clan heirs, so their education and knowledge of other houses absolutely are not low.

In fact, the novel specifically shows that.....the rest of the cultivation world is not that clear on the actual specifics of Lan rules either. This is shown when Jin Zixun pressured Lan Xichen and Lan Wangji into drinking wine, a clear violation of Lan rules, and the rest of the cultivators in the banquet cheered him on.

These cultivators were also heads of Houses or very high-ranking members. Many of them would have studied in Cloud Recess. So again, people who have high education… still know shit all about the actual specifics of Lan rules beyond a vague, general monk-like impression.

About the only other person aside from Wei Ying (and Lan members) who knew the specific rule that Lans do not drink in that banquet was Jin Guangyao, a character whose trademark is high intelligence and extreme social savvy (plus having roomed with Lan Xichen and taken care of him for unknown amount of time right before the Sunshot campaign)

Are there secret parts of the Lan rules?

No. The Lan rules are public. The book is very clear on this. All Lan rules are carved into a massive stone placed at the foot of the mountain where Cloud Recess is, where anyone passing through or coming into House Lan can see it.

This rule stone was first mentioned when Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian met for the first time. Wei Ying complained that he didn’t know the rules and why are there so many things forbidden in the Lan rules? Lan Wangji replied with, rules are written on the stone. Go read it yourself.

The second time it was mentioned in the book, was Lan Qiren’s first class. The first thing he did was complained that even with the stone and rules being in open space, nobody bothered to read. So he will read the rules now.

The book mentioned at least two different sets of Lan rules that both need to be obeyed: 礼则篇 Lize Pian (Book of Rites) 上义篇 Shang Yi Pian (Book of Justice). Whether the rules are separated further into more sets or not is unknown.

Why are some Lan rules better known than others?

Because Lan rules are based on 克己復禮 Keji Fuli, a real-life Confucius asceticism that calls for the restraint/purge of one’s ego and to return to the core rites. This is also newly confirmed in MXTX’s new interview, though it has been more or less heavily suggested in the book itself, with House Lan being known as the House of Gentlemen.

Gentlemen here is not the Western ideal of Gentlemen, but rather a Confucius ideal and set of values. Confucius is the person who created this ideal in the first place.

So it’s not that some rules are better known, but rather the entire image of Lan House is a huge pointer as to how they live their life: with great restraint.

#mxtx #mdzs #Wei Ying #Wei Wuxian #Lan House #Lan Wangji #mo dao zu shi

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fairytale-poll · 4 months

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ROUND 4A, MATCH 1 OUT OF 2!

*Includes the original 1950 animated film, the 2002 sequel Cinderella II: Dreams Come True, and the 2007 sequel Cinderella III: A Twist in Time.

Propaganda Under the Cut:

Disney's Cinderella:

she is very iconic, she is super kind and has a beautiful dress

Submitting specifically because Cinderella III: A Twist in Time has lived rent-free in my head ever since I was a small child.

This Cinderella is most young (western) peoples introduction to this very story. Cinderella is so hopeful and by getting one small magical adventure, her whole life changes for the better. She is skilled and inspires such loyalty with her kindness that it’s hard to dislike her for any reason she gives. I’ve always been jealous of her ball hairdo too.

Walt Disney put all he had into this movie. And his favorite animation was the dress transformation scene. There’s a reason she is often front and center on the Princess group promotions.

she is the original. to me. probably the first exposure to cinderella for a solid chunk of people alive & on tumblr today. she is just a perfect encapsulation of everything that cinderella is, even if she's become warped in the public consciousness. also i'm pretty sure she's the reason why the glass slippers are so predominant in more recent retellings bc she is simply so iconic. 100/10 no notes 💜

She's maybe not the OG OG but she was one of the first animated Disney princesses and strangely enough it doesn't stop her from having an amazing personality. She's literally a slave but keeps being a nice person, forgiving and always doing her best. And the sequels absolutely didn't ruin her character. She's a sweet girl who tries to fit in but who's loyal to the person she is and who tries to change things always in a cute and sweet way to show people it's not that hard. She literally forgave Anastasia and tried to help her after all she did to her (the scene where the step-sisters destroy her dress still is terrifying to me)... she's awesome and deserves more recognition honestly...

(Mod's note: the following submitted specifically for Cinderella III: A Twist in Time, but I condensed the animated movies into one entry.) No she is not the same as the original Cinderella of 1950. This girl’s biggest chance was unfairly snatched away from her. When the Prince was brainwashed she was enough to get him to double take. She was so Right that their connection over powered magic. And she had to be rescued from a ship. And was almost crushed within a pumpkin! And finally had to expose another imposter, who turned out to be just another victim of Lady Trameine. This Cinderella fought harder for her love because she knew what True Love was like and she still was able to forgive those who asked for it.

(Mod's note: the following submitted specifically for Cinderella III: A Twist in Time, but I condensed the animated movies into one entry.) Listen yes it's the same Cinderella from 1950 but she has an arc in this one! It's Disney's greatest film!!

Listen I love them both but the animated Cinderella definitly shine in every single movie she has. And she has 3.

Vote for Cinderella because she deserves it and is still underrated in the Disney Princesses Franchise when she survived so much (ab*se... Lady Tremaine still terrifies me and she doesn't even have magical powers except when she steals the magic wand in Cinderella 3) Also one vote for Cinderella is one jump outside the window Henri is ready to do. Yes it's real.

Disney animated the original fairytale but definitely made it more magical and less creepy (like the birds making the step sisters blind? It gave me nightmares for ages). If I think: which one will I want to rediscover multiple times? Disney's Cinderella. Plus Cinderella 3 is a masterpiece.

Mofurun as "Mofurella"

listen. they do an episode where they're all sucked into Cinderella and they make the trans teddy bear Cinderella. Incredible story writing, 10/10, no notes.

Mofurdella is even plot relevant, that episode is how they get the Rainbow Carriage for their group attack anyway MOFURDELLA FIRST CINDERELLA PRECURE EPISODE TO GET ONE MOFURILLION VOTES

#cinderpoll #round 4 #round 4a #disney cinderella #disney cinderella animated #cinderella 1950 #disney's cinderella #cinderella #mofurun #mofurella #mahou tsukai precure #mahou tsukai prettty cure #precure #pretty cure #fairytale #poll tournament #poll bracket #character polls #polls

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deweyduck · 2 years

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HAPPY 20TH ANNIVERSARY KIM POSSIBLE (7 June, 2002)

Kim Possible premiered on Disney Channel on 7 June, 2002. The animated show focused on teenager Kim Possible who used her cheerleading skills to fight crime with her sidekick/best friend Ron Stoppable. The series initially ran for 3 seasons and 2 movies but was renewed for a fourth season after a fan letter campaign encouraged Disney Channel to bring it back, finally concluding with a total of 84 episodes on 7 September, 2007. Kim Possible remains one of Disney Channel’s most successful and beloved shows and was even brought back in 2019 for a live action movie because its themes are still relevant to contemporary children.

Kim Possible has influenced me and my tastes probably more than any other piece of media and I can’t imagine who I would be today without it. It’s the first show I can remember getting excited to watch each week. Kim and Ron were my first ever ship. Kim was a normal girl with flaws. She was judgemental and snarky and cared too much about what other people thought, but she was also courageous and smart and kind and learned from her mistakes. She showed me that your stereotypical “girly” interests that were usually made fun of could be your superpower. She fought crime. With cheerleading. Ron was scared of almost everything but he would do anything for his friends no matter how afraid he was. He taught me about loyalty, facing your fears, and to embrace what makes you different and “never be normal”. I am so grateful to have grown up with these characters and I have made so many friends through our mutual love for KP. I honestly don’t know who I’d be today without it. So thank you, Kim and Ron. I just know you are still out there saving the world together.

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mirai-e-jump · 6 months

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Beautiful Catalog Vol.1 ft. Kamen Rider Ryuki Cast Members Suga, Matsuda, Hagino and Ryohei Interviews & Photoshoot (pages and translations below)

Publication: December 16, 2002

Takamasa Suga (Ryuki) Interview

"We're enchanted by his soft and gentle smile~❤️❤️❤️. Maybe it's because he plays the role of a handsome man (?), but the image of Shinji Kido, played by Takamasa Suga-san in "Kamen Rider Ryuki" makes us feel relaxed when we see Suga-san~❤️❤️❤️. Shinji seems like an honest and hardworking guy, but we wonder, what does he and Suga-san have in common?"

Suga: For one thing, when I think like this, I really get into him, which I guess is all that there is? There are many things I can learn from him. Hmmm~, the same goes for his honesty, and also for his strength.

"Suga-san is also very laid back, yet he seems to have a strong core ❤️. You originally took lessons at a training school to become an actor, right?"

Suga: I've always loved and admired movies. When I was 18, I saw Iwai Shunji-san's movie "Swallowtail" in theaters, and when it was over, I was really shaken up. For awhile, I was in agony over what this feeling was. As time went on, it became clear to me that I wanted to express myself on that screen, and so I entered a training school to study acting. But, it wasn't interesting at all (laughs). I spent about a year wondering if this was the kind of expression I wanted to express. One day, I was sent to a movie set as an extra. I quit the training school because I realized that important things can only be learned on site.

"And? And? What happened after that????"

Suga: I had some free time, so I was given the opportunity to perform on stage. It was right around the time that I was introduced to my current agency, so that's how I ended up here (laughs).

"What was it like auditioning for Ryuki?"

Suga: I just wanted a job. I felt like I was grasping at straws. I was approached by my agency and accepted, but at first, Kamen Rider didn't really sound appealing (laughs).

"Eh~?! When you were a child, weren't there any heroes you admired?"

Suga: I only watched baseball, so I don't remember watching shows like that. I was a (Yomiuri) Giants fan, and it was around the time that (Masumi) Kuwata made his debut, so I think I remember saying, "Kuwata is the future!" (laughs)

"We wonder, what was Suga-san like as a child~?"

Suga: I was mischievous. My family owned a sushi restaurant, and I was always running around the store (laughs). There were many shops in the neighborhood. There was a grocery store next door, a soba noodle shop across the street, and a Chinese restaurant next door, as well as others. It gave off a downtown kind of atmosphere, you know?

"If you were to start a family, what kind of father would you want to be???"

Suga: In my family, both of my parents worked at the restaurant, so we rarely went anywhere as a family. That's why I hope I can create an environment where we can be together.

"Would you participate in the housework?"

Suga: I'll leave the housework to them!

"Would you cook?"

Suga: I don't do it.

"Cleaning?"

Suga: Not at all (laughs).

"Laundry?"

Suga: Well, when the time comes (laughs).

"I see. If it were Suga-san, I'd do anything for him ❤️. However, Suga-san is very fashionable and has a serious image, doesn't he? The outfits for this gravure photo shoot were also Suga-san's personal clothes, and even during talk shows, he wore a turban and a red western hat as his personality shines through⭐. Where do you find these Western styled clothes?

Suga: I'll wonder around Daikanyama, Harajuku, and Aoyama, and think things like, "Ah, I found something!" I don't decide what I'm going to buy today, I just go out on a whim and buy what I think looks nice. I'm not particular about brands either.

"Do you have any fashion references?"

Suga: There's nothing in particular. However, I do read fashion magazines. There's also alot of women's magazines, such as "Figaro," "Vogue," and "High Fashion"……I like women's fashion. The shapes and styles are beautiful.

"I see. The secret of Suga-san's cuteness may be because of the fact that he's honestly attracted to what suits his sense of style. His face is as beautiful as any girl's ❤️. I like girls who wear this kind of fashion when I walk with them! I wonder if he has any particular fashion preferences?"

Suga: That's not really true. I tend to dress up in various styles. But, I like girls who dress up and take care of their appearance. I think that's definitely more attractive as a woman.

"Well, who's your favorite actress?"

Suga: It's Kuroki Hitomi-san! My family loved Takarazuka Revue, and I thought she was beautiful from her Takarazuka days. I still admire her. She's both elegant and attractive, isn't she?

"I see, so older women are okay ❤️. I'm sure there are many mother fans whose maternal instincts are tickled by Suga-san, do you have any message for them?"

Suga: Please take care of your children! There's no exceptions (laughs). I think that Ryuki depicts a world that's truly profound even for adults, so please be sure to look at the content carefully.

"The show is coming to an end and the Riders are fighting a brutal battle. If it were Suga-san, what reasons would you have for fighting?"

Suga: Hmm, when I listen to the other Rider's reasons for fighting, I nod in agreement. It's a reason that only that person has. I think that's the theme of Ryuki as well. It's not about what's right and what's wrong, but since there's many different Riders, I think I've also asked questions like, "What is justice?"

"For example, would you fight for your family?"

Suga: I think so, if it were for family……I think I'd fight for someone I care about and want to care for.

"We know you're extremely busy right now, but what do you plan on doing after Ryuki is over?"

Suga: I'd like to try designing clothes. Also, I'm thinking of going to learn Japanese dance. After that, I'd like to get a license for a large motorcycle. There are so many things I want to do…..

"Finally, some words for the fans!"

Suga: I always do things at my own pace like this, so please continue to support me!

"Of course~ I hope you'll keep being Suga-san, and continue to move forward without losing that current freshness!"

Satoshi Matsuda (Knight) Interview

"A sharp gaze, and a tight body reminiscent of a wild beast. Satoshi Matsuda-san has a cool, wild, and mysterious feel to him, just like the image of Akiyama Ren (Knight) who he plays in "Kamen Rider Ryuki." However, he keeps quiet (laughs). When the hair and makeup artist said to him while setting his hair, "You have more than one whirlpool, don't you?" he responded with, "The official record is five." He also has an outstanding talent for winning the hearts of those around him! And when he smiles, it's so cute, your eyes will become dizzy~💙💙💙. There seems to be quite a gap between Matsuda-kun and Ren's character, but the actor himself feels no discomfort at all. He's an actor 💙. But still, it's tough having so much work, isn't it?"

Matsuda: I think one Kamen Rider is tougher on a schedule than having multiple jobs (laughs). Filming for the final scene of the movie version took a full 24 hours, starting at 6 a.m. and ending at 6 a.m. the next morning. After that, we were taken to a hotel, slept for 20 minutes, and then started filming for the TV version at 7 a.m. Filming would continue until 5 p.m. It really made me think that I was going to die (laughs).

"Normally, Matsuda-san is said to be the mood maker on set, and yet he was in such low spirits?"

Matsuda: No, I was in really high spirits. I was just going with the flow. I would fall asleep while in a standing position and wake up to the sound of "Test!" (laughs).

"Such a hard year is finally coming to an end, and we wonder what the end of Ryuki will be like~"

Matsuda: We don't even know if Ren will survive or die. But, even if the name of the show was "Kamen Rider Knight," I want to make sure that the story comes to an end, and I want to do my best to finish the story as Akiyama Ren.

"Despite his tough schedule, he made his debut as a singer with the maxi single "DISTANCE" on December 4!"

Matsuda: I was originally scouted as a singer. After 3 years, I was able to release a song with confidence. And, I think I did a great job~. We recorded 3 songs in 3 days, but we had to shoot Ryuki in the mornings, and the second day's shooting in particular was the scene where Knight screams in agony (laughs). There are no singers like that. Everyone was telling me to take care of my throat and use a humidifier instead of a heater (laughs). On top of all that, I couldn't even eat. I was told that if I put solid food down my throat, it would make my voice noisy, so I wasn't allowed to eat within 2 hours of it. I got through it with things like jelly drinks.

"Oh no~, you poor thing~!"

Matsuda: There's a bonus video on the CD that includes an interview with Manager Kawaguchi right after we finished recording the 3 songs. I was so careless with my manager that I was already dizzy. Since I was dealing with my manager, I let my guard down, so I was alittle unsteady~. I don't think you'll ever see such a burnt out look anywhere else, so it's quite a privilege (laughs).

"You released your personal DVD & Video "Colors" at the same time as the CD~. It also includes footage from the recording process. If you want to see Matsuda-san's true face, then there's his column "Matsuda Lab," which is currently being published on his website. It's a collection of hilarious and interesting writings, which set him apart from the plain diaries that are found on other talent's websites."

Matsuda: It's just for fun (laughs). When people who only know me as Akiyama Ren saw Matsuda Lab for the first time, they were shocked, and I still get emails saying, "I was surprised."

"It's certainly a surprising true face, and it's completely exposed. Apparently, he now types it on his computer, but before that, he'd write it on manuscript paper and have it retyped."

Matsuda: I would get very angry if I got even one punctuation mark wrong, so the person typing was very nervous (laughs).

"You pay attention to every detail 💙. If you join the fan club, you'll be able to see more in depth (?) columns and special videos. I'm curious. We heard that you used to always respond to fan letters and e-mails, but the support of your fans is a source of energy, right?"

Matsuda: Energy's also a big part of it, so I'd like to know what you are looking for from Satoshi Matsuda. There's another "me" who's controlling "Satoshi Matsuda," and he wants to know your opinions (laugh). These days, I don't have much time to reply, but I do read all the letters and e-mails.

"I think there are alot of fans who are older than you, but how old would your lover be?"

Matsuda: It doesn't matter if they're 30 or 35 years old. My grandmother is eight or nine years older than my grandfather, and because of that, every couple in my family has an older female member. I'm not particular about it either.

"Well then~💙. So, have you ever thought about what kind of family you want to have?"

Matsuda: I don't really feel like it. But, there are moments where I'd like to get married. I like seeing happy families at events. And yet, I can't imagine myself as a father. I wonder what it'd be like to become a second generation, when I myself haven't mastered anything yet.

"I think you're abit like Ren in that he's stoic 💙. When you were a child, who was the hero that you idolized?"

Matsuda: Hmmm, there was no one there. I was just a kid who fished outside all the time.

"Your hobby is still fishing, right~?"

Matsuda: To be honest, I want to hide a fishing rod with me on set. If they found out, they'll probably say, "Are you serious?!," but it's frustrating when filming finishes first thing in the morning and there's a good fishing spot right over there. But, my rod is long and stands out. It's a 50,000* yen rod with a reel that costs 40,000-50,000 yen, so it feels like a professional grade weapon for catching fish (laughs). (*over $300)

"He specializes in black bass, with his largest official record being 52cm (20.5in)! Ama~zing! When I asked him to give a final message for the fans, he thought for a moment before answering with……"

Matsuda: Some people seem to think that singing is a side job, but I'm doing my best in singing as well. I can't say which is most important, acting or singing. I hope that people will watch and listen to my performances and judge them for themselves.

"Never cutting corners! So cool~💙💙💙. What else would you like to do in the future?"

Matsuda: I'd like to try radio. With the same spirit as Matsuda Lab.

"We're sure it'll be fun! We'll warmly welcome your efforts that make use of your unique character, and of course, your looks 💙."

Takashi Hagino (Ouja) Interview

"His eyes, with their intense shine, are truly those of Ouja! Once you've caught a glimpse of him with those eyes, you'll be captivated~💜💜💜. Takashi Hagino-san starred as Akira Suzumura in the cult classic show "Choukou Senshi Changerion," and also appeared in "Kamen Rider Ryuki," which was produced by the same Producer, as Takeshi Asakura. His blonde hair matches the mood of his role, and with a leopard print shirt, and slim black pants……it's too intense, isn't it scary?"

Hagino: It's really scary. Nah, I'm kidding, I don't actually know (laughs). I don't mind if people think I'm scary.

"He has the sex appeal of a man, but also has the innocent smile of a boy~💜💜💜. That's how he attacks when his prey is distracted~ (laughs). We wonder if Asakura, a brutal murderer and escaped prisoner, has anything in common with Hagino-san."

Hagino: I think there's some. When you've been doing it for a long time, you become influenced by the role you play. When I'm tired, I'm like, "I'm irritated!" (laughs).

"There it is! Asakura's famous line (?), "I'm irritated!" How does it feel to play such an intense role?"

Hagino: Regardless, it's alot of fun. It's not a role I get to play very often, so I want to enjoy it even more until the end. I don't want to relax in my private life right now, rather, I want to finish the story in the same way that I've been doing it so far. I want to keep the tension, and perform with a sense of urgency. In the meantime, I try to watch the news and live a normal life.

"I guess you could say you've broke new ground as an actor, huh~?"

Hagino: As a job, I was enthusiastic and thought, "Let's do this!" But it was my first time playing such a role, and I didn't have any hesitations about how I was going to do such an amazing role, but strangely enough, I was able to play it quite naturally from the first day. So I'm not sure I can call it breaking new grounds.

"That's true, your performance suggests that you've had plenty of experience. Given your career, we wonder, are you like the older brother on set?"

Hagino: Until now, I've often worked on set with senior actors, and there weren't many people younger than me. That's why it was interesting to see where I stood on set this time around. Suga-kun and Matsuda-kun are really good kids, and I've become inspired by the younger people. I've learned alot from their youthful energy and the way they use it. In my role, I often interact with Ryohei-kun, who's the same age as me, so we have alot of fun together.

"As a fan, it's very moving to see Hagino-san, who used to play the role of Akira Suzumura with all his heart, grow like a snake, shedding its skin, and happily playing the role of Takeshi Asakura. What has the reaction from viewers been like?"

Hagino: There was an episode called "The Girl and Ouja," and since then, I've been getting an incredible amount of fan letters. Until then, I had received letters from people who said they liked, "scary things" and "bad guys" in a cult like way, but when they said, "I saw a different side of him, even though he is a bad guy," the number of letters increased rapidly.

"So, what kind of hero did Hagino-san himself admire during his childhood?"

Hagino: There was no one in particular, but I think I had a desire to become a hero. When I was a child, I genuinely thought that helping the weak was heroic, and I admired it. Doing things like helping girls even if they're elementary school students. In my role now however, I bully girls (laughs).

"Even so, for some reason, Hagino-san always plays "unusual" heroes, right? He's so handsome, that maybe he plays untraditional heros without any complaints?!"

Hagino: I think the roles I've been given to play are wonderful. Both Akira Suzumura and Takeshi Asakura are honest with themselves. I'm not saying that heroes need to be honest, but I think that it's very important. There's something in me that's attracted to that part.

"We wonder what kind of child Hagino-san was~?"

Hagino: I was naughty. But, I studied for entrance exams and went to cram school (laughs). I liked being called "boy." There are pictures of me studying until midnight, and of going to school with dark circles under my eyes. I'd get so excited when it came to studying, that I'd suddenly realize it was 2 a.m. (laughs). I was like, hey, I'm pretty amazing. I liked doing those kinds of things (laughs).

"Kya~! That's just like Hagino-san 💜. What kind of father do you think you'd be if you had children?"

Hagino: I can only imagine, but I think I'd really love it. After work, I'd feel like going home right away.

"Would you let your own child watch Ryuki?"

Hagino: That's……They can watch it, because it's their own father (laughs). If they complain, I'll just slap them. I'm just kidding about that last part (laughs).

"By the way, you also tried your hand at singing for the first time with the CD, "Kamen Rider Ryuki Song Collection", right?"

Hagino: It was alot of fun! I was able to experience recording for the first time in my life, so I was very satisfied with it (laughs). The voice training and the production process were also interesting. Also, I was really nervous. The engineers and everyone else were professionals, so I knew I had to do it right. But, I'm not a professional singer, so I had no choice but to do the best I could, but when I actually tried it, it was alot of fun.

"Does this mean, you'll debut as a full fledged singer?!"

Hagino: It's not like I said to myself, "I want to be a singer!," but it was an experience that I'd like to do again if I get the chance.

"As expected, you'll continue to focus mostly on acting in the future, right?"

Hagino: That's right. I want to play various roles in various situations. I want to play roles that I've never played before, and I want to play roles that I have played before.

"I see. If the current Hagino-san were to play Akira Suzumura, I'm sure we'd see a new side to him. Now then, some final words to the fans!"

Hagino: As long as you enjoy it, that's the most important thing. I'll do my best, so I hope everyone enjoys watching.

"We had a great time during the interview with him, with his skillful storytelling and sexy beams bursting 💜. We hope he'll continue to entertain us more and more as an actor and singer (?)~💜💜💜.

Ryohei (Zolda) Interview

"Kya~! He's sooo~ tall~! Furthermore, his handsome and chiseled face is so cool that it makes us dizzy~. That's because Ryohei-san, who plays the role of Shuichi Kitaoka, a talented lawyer known as Zolda in "Kamen Rider Ryuki," is an active fashion model with a career spanning about 7 years~💚."

Ryohei: In the modeling world, there are people taller than me, but in the entertainment world, I'd say there's only Abe Hiroshi-san (laughs). I don't mind it anymore, but I used to have a complex about it.

"He has long, slender legs, which we think is one of his charming points. Although he has experience from appearing in commercials, this is his first real acting job!"

Ryohei: I've always liked Kamen Rider and other heroic show, and when I was a child, I would wrap myself up in the curtains around my house and say, "Henshin!" That's why I was genuinely happy. You'd never think that you can become a hero, or that you yourself can transform, right?! When I got the role, I was just so happy, that I couldn't stop cackling.

"When he's silent, he looks just like Kitaoka, cool and mature, but when he speaks, he gives off a playful, boyish look that's very cute~💚💚💚. But, you couldn't "cackle" once filming started, could you?"

Ryohei: I think that acting is the same whether it's a regular drama or a tokusatsu production, the creators are always on site, and they're always trying to produce high quality work, so you can't go to a production site just to have fun. There was such a sense of urgency on set, that I felt my back tense up.

"Your schedule was tough, wasn't it~?."

Ryohei: There were times when I didn't perform, so it wasn't that tough. It was a relief for me since I had no experience in acting, but still, I was always nervous whenever I entered the set (laugh). If I go in every day, I can stay in the mode of my role for a long time, but after a 2 week gap, I'm back to my normal self. It was quite difficult to get back into the role. I also tried to imagine how Kitaoka would spend his time off screen.

"What are some similarities and differences between Ryohei-san and the lawyer Kitaoka?"

Ryohei: The movements and gestures are as close to mine as possible. I don't usually talk like him though (laughs). When I first received the script, I thought he was a lawyer, had money, and was a slick guy who could do anything. I hadn't heard that he was suffering from a disease, so I wanted to make him come off as arrogant, obnoxious and unpleasant.

"I see. Kitaoka, a confident man who carries the shadow of his illness, is attractive, but Ryohei-san, who is friendly and talks about many things, is also wonderful~💚. Did you ever feel confused on set?"

Ryohei: To be honest, I never ever knew what to ask. I saw various cast members coming in later and asking the Director questions about things they didn't understand, and that's when I realized that it was okay to ask questions. Since then, whenever I have a question or an opinion like, "Isn't it better to do something like this?," I'll say it as much as I can.

"The setting is that, "Riders are fighting each other!" There are alot of different actors in the show, which is interesting as a viewer, but isn't it also exciting when on set?"

Ryohei: Even though they're younger than me, there are some people who are my seniors when it comes to acting. There's so many different styles and personalities, and it's both instructive and stimulating. I realized again how interesting acting is, and I also realized how difficult it is. It's so deep that when you look up, there's no end to it. I always try not to make mistakes the next time, but when filming finishes, I find myself regretting something again, and the cycle repeats itself. But, I wonder if it'd be bad if that stopped.

"I wonder, what's the difference between modeling work and acting? When I looked at the gravure photoshoot earlier, I saw that your poses and facial expressions were so perfect, and I felt that this is what you'd expect from model!💚💚💚"

Ryohei: It's been a long time since I've done a gravure shoot, so it felt really good. Modeling is all about having fun in the moment. Once I enter the studio, I look at the atmosphere, the photographer's personality, and the clothes they're wearing, and I instantly think about how I want to act. It's an instantaneous decision. As an actor, you spend alot more time developing your character, so it's a great feeling of fulfillment after you're done. There's differences between the two, kind of like short distance running and long distance running, but the sense of accomplishment is the same and both are enjoyable.

"When it comes to future activities, we wonder, what are you thinking about~?"

Ryohei: Regarding roles, I'd like to play a variety of roles without refusing any that are presented to me. It could be a murderer or a comedian. I think that my current popularity was gained as a result of the popularity of tokusatsu, and not because of my ability. From now on, I want to work on closing the gap that has opened between my popularity and my ability. I don't want to let down my fans, so I want to do various things to improve my skills, and I want to acquire as many things as possible as an actor. In that sense, I'm very "hungry."

"Kya~! (starts clapping) Now that I think about it, Ryohei-san also has experience as a salaryman. Now that he's had alot of experience, his words carry alot of weight to them, anyway, tell us about the type of woman you like and your views on marriage~!!!"

Ryohei: I don't have a specific type, but my type is the person I'll fall in love with (laughs). Marriage is about your partner, so I hope to meet someone who has similar values to mine.

"We're curious, in Ryuki, what's going on with the relationship between lawyer Kitaoka and his male secretary Goro-chan?"

Ryohei: It's a mystery, isn't it? (laughs). Since we don't see much of Kitaoka's private living space, we can only imagine how they live together. Personally, I think that maybe Goro-chan is a live in worker, and that they each have separate rooms and are living a normal life.

"With some mysteries remaining (laughs), Ryuki is finally coming to an end, huh?"

Ryohei: I don't know how things will turn out myself, but please look forward to more drama towards the conclusion, as well as the future of Shuichi Kitaoka and the Kitaoka Law Office!

"We're really looking forward to what Ryohei-san will do after he plays Kitaoka~💚💚💚."

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shinmelodia · 8 months

Text

Love & Process: blue (2002)

Hello to everyone reading, and welcome to a highly belated attempt to squeeze some of my thoughts and emotions through some semblance of a creative process and onto a page. Today, I want to introduce this blog by talking about a lovely film, blue (2002), directed by Hiroshi Ando and based on a manga by Kiriko Nananan.

Since I'm still somewhat new at diving into live action film, especially, like, uh, Japanese indie film, its helping to start with the yuri genre. Because like practically any other woman on this site, I quite enjoy lesbians. blue's manga original offers something of an alternative to the yuri norm, though, and the film follows suit. Both are definitely examples of the Japanese filmmaking trend I've heard of called "mumblecore," (or maybe mumble-komi for the manga equivalent) that most people know through the likes of Inio Asano's early work. Like Solanin or Girl on the Shore, blue is shoegazey, quiet, and contemplative, adorned with moments of subtle physical intimacy, layered emotion, and stunningly beautiful compositions of daily life.

My metric for these kinds of slow mood pieces, which I've previously tended to watch at random whenever the mood struck me, is that if my barely-medicated ADHD brain can even finish them, there's clearly something special going on. blue passed with flying colors; yeah, ok, it took two sittings, but I spent all of both enraptured, immersed, and invested in the mono no aware of silent, fragile love and messy asymmetry that formed this movie's emotional palette. blue is about love, of course, but its also about process and expression, both emotional and creative, and how processing things, artistically, verbally, non-verbally--is often required of real, human love.

In being about this, I think it did things for me that a lot of yuri often doesn't and gently hit me in a place that I really needed to be hit. So, let me get into it. This is going to be...very personal, and also obviously spoil the details of the film, if you care about that, although I'm sure there will be plenty of depth left in the text that I leave untouched. Whether you read it or not, I'll be happy I made it. Oh, and sorry if I come off as really New for being so struck by themes and aesthetics that are probably sort of standard for this type of film. I can't help what I feel like writing about, though.

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Kirishima Kayako lives in a small town by the sea, one much like dozens of other anonymous, disaster-prone exurban towns in Japan at the turn of the millennium. She rides the bus to her girls' high school every day, where she eats lunch with her friends and tries her best to learn something in class. Really, though, she's aimless, quiet, lonely, and introspective. She's trying, but its rare for others to be able to tell. She's also in love with her classmate, Endou Masami. When she confesses at the end of the first act, on a windy beach against the vastness of the ocean, Endou responds that she's glad, and the two become our lesbians for the movie. Kayako falls to her knees and cries in relief. Masami is different from the others--she sees how hard Kayako tried. Does that mean she loves her back, though?

Endou Masami has cool passions and interests; she collects American CDs, which she expertly critiques and describes while lending to friends. The mere view of her vibing to her American alt-rock while smoking a cigarette in front of her apartment window is album-cover worthy in itself. Kayako feels the same way: one of the most intimately gay scenes of the pre-confession portion of the film is when Masami lights a cigarette and asks if Kayako is shocked. The quiet girl declares without hesitation, "No, I'm admiring the way you lit the match."

The whole early film is such a delectable, lonely vibe. The slowly intertwining couple's solidifying dynamic is the kind that forms between an emotionally complex introvert and the perhaps even more unknowable yet somehow more confident object of their affection. The two are classmates, (there's no classic yuri kouhais and senpais here) but for the early part of the film we are seeing things from Kayako's perspective and Masami seems unmistakably older in spirit. There's something about the dense emotions conveyed in her gazes at her new girlfriend, the almost world-weary tinge of recklessness in her distant grins. She talks about music Kayako's never heard of and lends out books with Romantic-era paintings that she has well-formed thoughts on. Kayako even openly admits that if she could, she would want to be Masami.

I think we've all loved a girl like that.

It's a pretty typical experience in middle school or high school, for really anyone lonely who loves women, to be drawn to these sorts of sad, beautiful, oh-so-seemingly-complex femmes. I guess straight men have a similar thing going on with the whole Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype, but for us women (or, women-to-be, at the time, I guess), the phenomenon of these people to us often involves a sort of existential jealousy. I'm not sure what is so alluring to other people about the sense that the object of their love has Something Going On that they are working through, or a vast and complicated life beyond the scope of one's understanding, but it me it always felt like something I was missing out on for myself. Obviously, a lot of their experiences and interests must be interesting and fun and super cool, you think, but even what pain you think they convey must be somehow more edifying than yours.

For me, the edifying aspect was the mere fact of femininity itself. The idea of a girl who has deep and Real emotions, who feels Real love and Real sadness and can actually express that in how she looks, beautiful and imperfect, always threw into stark contrast my own inability to express myself comparably. I was depressed, I was growing up, and I felt things, too, but, as someone who everyone thought was a straight boy and who was too scared to admit to being otherwise, I lacked that sort of beauty, that means of expressing what was inside me through fashion, makeup, book or music knowledge or taste. Or at least I thought I did. Thus, my own emotions must have also meant less. So, I ignored them and belittled them, and entire years passed before I processed a thing correctly. I always wanted to be some other girl. That was the only thing that would fix me.

I assume that the teen (and, uh, sometimes beyond) existential pining experienced by some other people in real life usually lacks the fun bonus that mine had of a screaming void where my femininity should have been, but I'm not sure how much this actually matters to the crux of the kind of experience I'm talking about. That some kind of void is there is all that matters, really, and its there for Kayako in her relationship with Masami at the beginning of the film. She has nothing, Masami is everything, and just being close to her is enough, for now. Just being noticed, just sharing something with her, is all Kayako feels like she can ask for.

Of course, this incomplete way of seeing love can't last, which brings us to the next part of the film, which starts when the two are hanging out and Masami reveals through a guarded, distant grin that she had an abortion a while ago. This isn't something that shocks Kayako or is really meant to shock the audience, and it isn't the big moment where she forced to reconsider her feelings. Rather, she asks how it went, and Masami responds honestly. She mentions she felt horrible the next day and had to be picked up by ambulance from the nurse's office, prompting Kayako to recall silently what to us was the film's first scene, a view from her window during class of an anonymous ambulance, sirens turned off, discreetly rescuing a student.

That she had this ambiguously traumatic, and at least unpleasant and potentially taboo experience is something that could have made Masami feel even older to Kayako, her pain even more distant and obscure. It certainly already is a way that Masami herself feels distant from others. Yet, by considering her own special, observant view of the ambulance back when it happened, it becomes one that Kayako can in some small way assertively share with her. Rather than continuing to put her lover's experiences on a pedestal, Kayako in this scene makes a silent decision to turn a blossoming mutual acceptance simply that they happened into a moment of true intimacy between the two, a sleepover punctuated by smirking kisses and satisfied cuddles initiated by each of them for the other. Despite her remarks that Kayako is weird for unhesitatingly wanting to stay with her, its an intimacy that Masami is happy to accept. This is all an important turning point in Kayako's development because she begins to choose insight, closeness, and assertion over the distant admiration that trapped her earlier.

As we go on, we'll start seeing how blue's gentle impact comes from the way it doesn't glorify or sugarcoat that earlier kind of unhealthy and immature dynamic. Instead it subverts it by giving Masami depth and Kayako agency, before reaching an endpoint that reflects on how the dehumanization of that kind of depressed, pining relationship can be overcome. In that sense, blue is a yuri romance mostly about the couple coming to accept their own and each other's humanity and capacity for expression. Like any good mumble movie, its full of long silences and almost unrealistically hesitant dialog, and doesn't give any explicit internal monologues like a lot of manga do. The world of this movie is one where expression is an uphill battle, something that has to be worked towards and struggled through. It's the world that Kayako and Masami share, in their own separate ways. And that's why its such a triumph to watch Kayako finally find her voice, her passion, and her process, which all starts in this scene.

First, though, it's time to learn about the Something that Masami has Going On.

Things begin when Kayako is still sleeping. Masami gets a call on her house phone that she doesn't answer, but that sends her into a silent spiral of emotional dread. She spends the next day at school in the nurse's office, refusing to tell Kayako what's going on and confiding only in her friend Nakano. Then, when summer break comes along, she disappears, leaving Kayako alone at home, pouring silently over the book of still life oil paintings that Masami lent her.

It ends up being Nakano who tells Kayako why she left. It's the story Masami didn't tell about the source of her abortion: an adult, married man whom she had a relationship with and eventually a pregnancy from. She got things taken care of without telling him, alerted her parents and tried never to see the rotten salaryman again. That is, until he called. He wasn't getting along with his wife anymore, apparently, and she had some sort of attachment to him that made her come running back. Her taste in music originally came from him, after all. It seems that, for the time being, her devotion to this mysterious, abusive man is going to perpetuate a brutal cycle: she'll keep hurting both Kayako and herself all at once.

What really destroys Kayako and her relationship, though, is that she lies about it. When she comes home after some predictably rough interactions with this guy, she tells her supposed girlfriend that she was enjoying a vacation with friends, and even gives her some grapes, supposedly grown in the prefecture she was hanging out in, as a twisted souvenir. The more assertive Kayako enforces her boundaries without hesitation, though, in equally as blunt a tone as she complimented her love, as when she told her she wanted to stay with her, all those nights ago. "Why are you lying to me?" Its with that same grin, now tinged with emotionally oblivious deception, that Masami dares to at first first feign ignorance.

"Eh?" Her smile is shallower than its ever been.

So Kayako walks away.

Their dynamic has now become worse than just immature; it's entirely toxic. From an outside perspective, Kayako is working on her shortcomings, while Masami refuses to reconcile her past. This kind of toxicity, though, is sadly just as common in high school (and even sometimes middle school) as is the kind of misunderstanding, lonely pining I talked about earlier, just usually among different sorts of people. Appropriately, its often even that exact kind of beautiful, hurting, mature femme (in the eyes of disastrous, moody lesbians like Kayako) who is going through that sort of pain. Its that mysterious and tragic byproduct of compulsory heterosexuality that causes a lot of girls to seek validation in the love of an older man, and that I imagine becomes a sort of addiction to that validation that only masquerades as love. Hell, Masami attributes much of what made her seem so interesting on the surface, her love of music, to this guy. She feels like she'd be nothing without him, and the way Kayako praised her, at least in the way she interpreted it, did nothing to dispel this fear. Which I think is really why she decided to go back, even though it would mean betraying the very girl whose love provided her an escape from it all.

Its an ugly truth, and its one that yuri media usually shies away from portraying, but it is explored with refreshing frankness and resolved with astounding maturity by the end of blue. And I think its the source material's status as "alternative" (I guess in Japanese parlance, Garo-inspired) manga, not to mention the movie's simply as an independent film, that allows it to break with genre limitations in this way. There's been tons of writing done on how yuri definitely presents a fantasy of the sapphic experience. Mainstream yuri's origins in Class-S still to this day often cause it to portray romances between women as fundamentally different, and inherently more pure, than those involving men, trapping them in a bubble of unassailable innocence. While that kind of makes sense and seems extremely cool to those of us who celebrate having little interest in moids or whatever, it also has the effect of sugarcoating and sometimes even outright obscuring what real women, even (and sometimes especially) sapphic ones, go through.

There's already a decent amount of yuri, especially among those aimed at older demographics and those where its more of a secondary genre, that do deal with compulsory heterosexuality and the experiences that come with it. What are much rarer are yuri series where one of the lover's flaws more resemble Masami's than Kayako's. Not enough that I've read at least is willing to make its relationships messy, or have one of its leads just do straight up bad things like self-destructive cheating and lying.

Because, really, its the same as what Kayako went through, isn't it? The lonely longing for something more that feels like it can only be cleansed by denying oneself all one has and betting it all on being close to someone else. The only difference between the two's actions is temperament and perhaps socialization--one sought it from a cooler woman, the other from an older man. And somewhere out of sight, that sad, irresponsible, fucked-up adult was probably hopelessly lonely, too, just like Kayako had to accept Masami was. Maybe disaster lesbians, disaster bisexuals(?), and yes, disaster straights aren't so different after all.

Well, other than that Kayako has worked to process her feelings, while Masami went and ruined her relationship over them. That's an important difference. Still, though, even Kayako has some work to do about how she feels about all of this. Masami's pedestal has been smashed, whether she likes it or not, and now she's lonelier than ever. So where does this vampiric cycle of taking from others end? What substance can replace loneliness in this ouroboros of etropic emotional alchemy?

Kayako doesn't touch the grapes. Instead, she silently processes things, lies on the floor listening to the cicadas scream in the garden. The grapes go rotten, and her brother throws them out. She sulks for a while.

Then, she starts painting. A still life of grapes, inspired by the books that Masami lent her. At first, her drawing is lousy, as the school fine arts instructor later tells her, but the colors are gorgeous. The deep purples of the fruits are expertly layered to capture light and tell a story, one deeper than the instructor could possibly imagine. It's the story not only of the transformation of a relationship, but of the growth of one of its participants. As the hot, still air of the coastal Japanese summer cloys around her lonesome final vacation of high school, Kayako finally salvages a passion to call her own out of a floundering relationship. When school starts again and she picks up art classes, going to Tokyo for uni, a dream that was previously held only by Masami, starts to be within her reach. She has a future, an interest, and a way to process all has happened to her.

And then comes the time for Masami to try and return. She proves unwilling to address all that happened before, instead trying to kiss Kayako after school in the art room. Her undeserved attempt at intimacy is rejected with a shove, but so too is her self-pity that causes her to instantly run away. There's more that needs to be said that simply "I'm a terrible person." Kayako pursues her into the town's small shopping district as night begins to fall and neon crackles to life against a cool late summer night. Now the emotional climax of the movie begins.

First, Kayako starts talking. She tells Masami about the painting, about her summer, about how lonely she was without her, about all the places she wanted to go with her. She talks about how happy she was at the same time that she found something she wanted to do without her. This approach is new for her. She's never so far relied on words so heavily to express her emotions. When Masami points this out, Kayako says:

This is how she's choosing to process things for the time being. At first, it was being silent to carefully consider her emotions. Now, its speaking up to keep them focused on what she really wants.

Then, its Masami's turn, for the first time, to tell the truth. By now they're away from the small cluster of lights, staring out at the blackness of the beach where they first got together. Masami broke up with the guy, she says. But she also asserts that she came to his emotional aid to begin with because she felt his need for help was more important than anything else to her. She couldn't tell her girlfriend this before, because doing so would mean telling a truth she didn't think Kayako could bear to hear: that he meant more to Masami than she did.

Kayako already knows this, of course. And by speaking up to quell her justified anger, by weaving words like the deft strokes of honest color on the tip of a paintbrush, she's gotten herself to a point where she can accept it, too.

I mean, think about it. Masami is broke now; Kayako needed to buy her a sandwich so she wouldn't be hungry on their impromptu date. Her sabotaging drive to be validated and her inability to accept love from the girl willing to give it has, by all accounts, ruined her life for the time being and harmed those around her. Even though she broke up with the guy out of necessity, or out of some fleeting impulse to run back to Kayako, she still feels like nothing without him. As she says to Kayako later, now the envy runs in reverse--Kayako is passionate about painting now, while Masami will still amount to nothing. Despite it all, though, Kayako is willing to love her. She's called Masami out on what she needs to be, then decided to stay nonetheless.

"I always come second. You broke up with him, so the number one spot is vacant. When someone else comes, you'll put him there...

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For most of my life, I believed that artistic expression was primarily the product of unrestrained, innate, and self-indulgent passion. I thought it was just something people either have or don't have, and that when they do, its something that can drive them to great heights of accomplishment and happiness otherwise impossible for humans to reach. It was mostly Japanese otaku media that instilled this into me, I think. I grew up exposed to a dizzying array of diverse and often miraculous artistic products that captured my imagination in ways the safe output of my own boring, monolithic home empire never did, and most of them were made by people who literally poured their lives into working on them. From Eiichro Oda's future-destroying, decades-long devotion to making One Piece to Kentaro Miura giving his life to practically paint the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel in pen on page after double-page spread in Berserk, to all of the hyper-passionate, universe-shattering early works of Hideaki Anno and his animator cohorts, I thought that I lived in a world of weird and wonderful treats whose cooks had the work ethic of demigods and the talent to match.

And even on the lower levels of the medium, among fan artists, cosplayers, writers, posters, historians, I felt surrounded by people who lived and breathed impossible passion, whose lives must have been defined by a kind of information processing my brain simply wasn't capable of. They had some ability to inhale the miraculous vapors of an abundant artistic landscape and spew out works of their own that further decorated the texture of a fleeting age of impossible marvels. And all that time, there I was, left on the sidelines, interested in many things but passionate about none, and lacking the motivation to really work to pursue anything at all. It was (and, honestly, still is) a state of existential discomfort similar to that sort of lonely-girl-pining, but doubtlessly far larger in scale. Some people had passion, while I had nothing to show for all my years of being alive. For fuck's sake, there was so much stuff out there, and I barely could muster the motivation to even read any of it most of the time.

After a while, I started to feel like I was simply broken, like I was an empty person that didn't belong in the very world I loved living in. And while I think this might be a niche outlook and insecurity (although one represented, to my profound gratitude, in Masami), I think it's also how a lot of people think about love. Love is often portrayed as a feeling sparked entirely of instinct, one that, when a person truly feels it, will never cause them to make any mistakes or do anything fucked up to those they care about. Something that will drive those bolstered by it to impossible heights, improve lives beyond the sorrow and loneliness to which they are otherwise condemned. But, as Kayako learned and as Masami and I are having to find out, that isn't really the whole story.

Expression is love. Love is process. Therefore, expression is also the labor of putting love through a process, of rigorously trying to get your ass in a seat and put in the steps of putting your feelings into form. As this is required of art, so is it required of relationships. And so the two are a cycle. Creation requires emotions to process; relationships require emotions to be processed. And the love that creation inspires feeds itself into the love for others that inspires the emotion to fuel more creation. A Labor of Love. Again, I know I'm New.

But this is what Kayako has been working up to all movie long, first with her silence, then with some words, then with the labor of painting, the iteration of getting better, then with more words again. She has found a slow cycle that is elevating her above her loneliness, a cycle that Masami helped create, and is welcome within, but that can, if need be, exist without her.

Love, labor, process. Expression, creation, process. Creating, processing, choosing...in the end, to do it all again. To stay with what--and who--you have labored to love. And that is the choice Kayako has made.

I have not yet answered what, after thinking and writing about this movie for days on end, might be the substance that can replace loneliness as fuel for the alchemical cycle of emotional taking and giving. By the end of the lovers' reunion, sitting by the road under the slowly-illuminating blue of a haphazardly-clouded dawn sky, Masami doesn't feel like she has an answer, either. She feels small and hollow, manipulative and weak. She's jealous of the coping strategy her own girlfriend has developed to deal with the effects of her bad behavior. So, in the end, what is she? What is there even left for Kayako to love?

I'll be honest, this feeling is so fucking real I get perilously teary every time I think about it. Because, for as much as I mused about Kayako's feelings resonating with me as a former and sometimes girl-piner, when it comes to my current relationship at age 22, it's Masami in whom I see myself most clearly and brutally. It's hard not to when she is the only representation in romance, let alone in yuri, I have seen so far who is as much of a fucking brat as I am at times. Whose tendency to sabotage her own relationship makes it so asymmetric that what her girlfriend feels appears almost one-sided, but whose love is real all the same. If she lacks process, talent, maturity, mystique, if no one is ever going to be good enough for her, then what at all does she have left?

The answer to all of this is the thing that lies at the core of her being, that makes her who she is. The source of her potential to express herself, the starting point of a process yet to fully begin. It's hard to see, but it's there. Its what makes her Endou Masami. And its what Kirishima Kayako loves the most.

It's color. It's the thing at the core of creation that can't be described with words, that forms the motivation for any process. Its the vivid purple of a painted grape whose intentional creation transcends deception and nurtures discovery. It's the blue of a dawning sky whose light guides two girls in messy, lopsided love back into each other's arms. It's Kirishima Kayako. It's Endou Masami. It's what everyone has, and it's all anyone has.

It's the source of love, its process, and its object.

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Eventually, Kayako has to leave for Tokyo. That's the decision that's best for her, and its a decision that, for the time being, will leave Masami behind in the countryside, hard at work on the process of learning to love herself. At the end of the film, she sends Kayako one final piece of proof of who she is. It's a painting of sorts, recorded on VHS, composed not of oil but of compressed light and sound. Stylistically, as the camera zooms in, it begins to resemble less Renoir and more Rothko: at first, its the beach, then, simply the point of the horizon, the area where the sea and sky meet. Its raw, not quite processed, pure color, vibrant blue, filtered and compressed into chunky, washed-out 800x600.

By way of description, "this is all I can do."

For years, I've struggled to believe that my emotions, hindered by depression and self-sabotage, have any value at all. As someone for whom love, passion, and expression have always felt difficult, even putting my thoughts down on a page, let alone drawing, painting, composing, or directing, has always seemed impossible. Recently, though, I've grown a lot. I've found the beginnings of a process learned to accept its existence. Both this process, and all the loves that go along with it, are often uncomfortable. They are painful and brutal and blissful things into which to pour the labors of communication and the torments of understanding. I've learned to process discomfort for the sake of creation, to create for the sake of love. It sounds cheesy, but again, I can't help what I wanted to write about.

I hope you'll join me as I find more new things and tough feelings I love to process on this account. There's so much more I'd love to say about blue, just for starters. I could talk about my undying appreciation for the work of Mikako Ishikawa, or how the shots in this movie are so gorgeous and evocative that I'd seen many of them before in "Japan in the 00s" vibes compilations.

But, until then, this is all I can do.

#japanese film #japanese cinema #yuri #yuri manga #lgbtq films #teen romance #pining #film analysis #personal essay #blue (2002)#kiriko nananan #mumblecore #long reads

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twig-tea · 7 months

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A question for you because you seem like one of those people who has watched everything: how did you get started watching bl, and what are your ultimate favorite shows?

Double-barrelled! I'm honoured.

How did I get into BL?

The short answer is that ~2016 the YouTube algorithm served me up Lovesick and I immediately went EXCUSE ME WHAT IS THIS and looked up everything else available and watched literally everything I could get my hands on (which at the time was easy because there was only a handful compared to today, but it still felt like a wealth of content to enjoy).

The longer answer is that I used to be really involved in GL (I was the secretary at the first Yuricon in North America in 2002 or 2003) and then BL manga fandom (was in a scanlation group for awhile) through ~2006? so its extra hilarious that this wasn't my route in; I apparently took a break right before they started making live action versions in Japan. But when I got into Thai BL it was fun rediscovering these tropes in a new medium and through the lens of a new-to-me culture, noticing how they differed and how the genre had matured (and how it hadn't), and on catching up on the stuff out of Japan, seeing some of the manga I read over a decade ago come to life! So I mention this history because it's definitely a part of why I stayed (and probably why the algorithm found me relatively quickly).

I only started tracking things in a spreadsheet in 2020 (and it's not nearly as comprehensive or useful as @absolutebl 's), but I did try to backfill the highlights of what I've seen and I have over 550 rows on there, fwiw. I'm a completionist so I do try to watch everything, though that's getting more and more impossible these days.

Ultimate Favourite Shows

This question is so hard. I know you didn't even give me a limit but you have to understand @lurkingshan, I can't choose favourites, I have a draft top ten list that has been blank for 3 years because I can't commit. Okok. I'm just going to list shows as they come to me (not in any particular order):

Thailand: Until We Meet Again, He's Coming to Me, Diary of Tootsies, WhyRU, Ingredients, Not Me, Secret Crush on You, I Told Sunset About You & I Promised You the Moon, Triage, You're My Sky, Make it Right, La Pluie, My Ride, Bad Buddy, My School President, Laws of Attraction, Moonlight Chicken, Dear Dr I'm Coming for Soul, To Sir With Love/Khun Chai, The Eclipse, Midnight Museum, Lovely Writer... Grey Rainbow [ducks, hides, runs away]

Japan: Doushitemo Furetakunai (no touching at all), Kinou Nani Tabeta (What did you eat yesterday?), Our Dining Table, Takara-Kun and Amagi-Kun, Old Fashioned Cupcake, 7 Days (mon-thurs & fri-sun), His (miniseries & movie), I Want to See Only You, Kieta Hatsukoi/My love mix-up, the Cherry Magic Movie, Life~Senjou no bokura/Love on the Line, 180 Degrees Longitude Passes Through Us, Given (anime is my fave version), Tokyo in April Is..., Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese, Utsukushii Kare/My beautiful man

Korea: Our Dating Sim, Semantic Error, The Lover [BL side], Color Rush, Blueming, Cherry Blossoms After Winter, Love Class 2, Made on the Rooftop, Discipline Z, Light on Me, To My Star (yes both seasons), Strongberry (faves are Long Time No See, Confidential Coffee Break, and A First Love Story), Sing My Crush, Just Friends?

Vietnam: Goodbye Mother, Hey! First Love, Nation's Brother, You Are Ma Boy, Follow My Sunshine, FOOLs, Tien Bromance: My Small Family, Love Bill

Philippines: Gameboys, Gaya sa Pelikula, Boys Lockdown, Cheat [warning: horror], Your Home, Better Days

Taiwan: Be Loved in House, My DNA Says Love You, We Best Love (1 & 2), HIStory (Crossing the Line is my fave, and second fave is...Make Our Days Count [ducks, hides, burrows into ground]).

Other: Summerdaze (short from Singapore), Stay Still (Hong Kong), HeHe and He (Hong Kong, final season in progress but s1&2 are so funny) and the bromances/difficult to categorize: Scumbag System, Word of Honor, The Untamed, Guardian, Coffee Prince, Bromance (Taiwanese), Great Men Academy, Mr Queen, Sleuth of Ming Dynasty, SCI Mystery

*deep breath* ok I'm stopping lol narrowing it down any less than this gives me pain so I won't try. Also I'm sure I forgot something obvious (and Tumblr was eating drafts of this at various points). All I can say about this list is it's under 100 and that's the best I could do.

Thanks for the ask, and to anyone who made it this far thanks for reading!

#thank you for the ask!#multi bl #rec list #i remain a parody of myself and unable to choose favourites #thank you for coming to my ted talk #ask game #typed so i can stop thinking it

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love-for-yamato-and-sora · 6 months

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This incident has been happening in Japan for several days. Because the production team's speech issue has angered all fans. A few days ago, Japanese loyal fans began to boycott the the movie version and have been scolding it for several days. Because according to the interview, they don't really want Taichi and his Digimon back. Today, Mr. Kakudou, the director of Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02, also released the settings for the ending of 02.

Chat room about the Digimon movie and 02TV’s final reply As part of the promotion for the Digimon movie that is currently being released, a conversation between Digimon's monster designer and the producer of the movie, Digimon Adventure at the time, was released in a Twitter chat room. The purpose of this article is not to discuss the content of the film. In part of the chat room conversation, the producer (hereinafter referred to as P) made such a statement. Although not completely accurate, the general idea is: "In the final chapter of Digimon Adventure 02, the protagonists have grown up and their children have gathered together. Before that, children with partner Digimon from all over the world will also appear one after another, but looking at the world in recent years situation, I began to think that those children would later be involved in conflicts in various places and their lives would not be peaceful.” As for how this is connected to this movie, let’s not talk about it for now.

The final chapter of Digimon Adventure 02, especially the scenes 25 years after the production in 2002, is said to be as if the number of years in between was not considered at all, but in fact this is not the case. I think based on what I still remember Write these down. The process leading up to this scene was discussed with the script writers including the series director, but it was said that they had not been considered at all and were not polite to the other script writers. So let me write a little bit about what exactly I considered and how long I thought about it. First of all, based on the setting of the previous TV anime Digimon Adventure, human children and digital monsters will become partners. This number will double every year. The stage of the previous work was also 1999, which was the year of the real-time screening. The number was 8, which were the protagonists of the show. In "02", which was set in 2002, there should be 64 people becoming new partners, and 3 of them became the protagonist team of the show. In the climax of the final episode, children with partner Digimon from all over the world gathered together, totaling more than 100 people. The exact total is slightly less than everyone, as there must have been some people who were unable to participate for some reason at that time.

Based on this premise, 25 years later, not only children, but all humans, including adults, have Digimon partners. So what happens during this process? Having a partner Digimon means that it will need corresponding living space and food for at least as long as that Digimon exists in the real world. Some abilities may be quite dangerous. This is fine when the numbers are small, but once the number reaches a certain level, they may become targets of discrimination and segregation, and of course there will also be motivations for military use. In fact, conflicts and disputes occur all the time in the world. Even if this were not the case, there are still many areas in the world that are dangerous just to live in. Children with partner Digimon will be in great danger. This extends all the way to adults and even affects the way religions exist, a process that cannot always be peaceful throughout the world. It is foreseeable that even from the perspective of a relationship with the digital world that is almost the same as the real world, this may shake the stability of culture, country, etc. Why do we still need to increase the number of people who have partner Digimon despite this? That is the relationship between human evolution and Digimon. I have said it before in an interview or in an online discussion. In short, after experiencing these global dangerous situations, finally 25 years later, the partner Digimon spread to everyone in the world, which made it possible for the protagonists to meet in peace after a long absence. This is the last scene. It would be extremely difficult to describe just a small part of the process, and the plot would become very heavy, so I chose to use narration to simply describe "this road is not smooth." I think that's as far as it can go for a Sunday morning children's show. So what are the protagonists doing during this period? I also thought about it some.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the number of children with partner Digimon began to increase at an accelerated rate, and the protagonists could not remain idly by as they fell into danger. What begins as a campaign to protect the children could turn into a global run. They may be involved in various conflicts. Taichi, who has a high enough ability to overcome dangers, plays the role of solving the situation starting from local areas in this situation. Twenty-five years later, the profession that marks Taichi as an adult is diplomat, but that is not a profession limited to one country, just because I cannot find a good enough word to describe a person who stands for freedom and wants to bring peace and friendship. Due to his busy activities in many fields, he got married and had children later than his junior Daisuke, so Taichi's child in the final scene is almost the youngest. The last picture should let people understand that there is such a thinking experience behind it.

Also write about other characters’ situations. Not long ago, when the Partner Digimon spread to all humans and actually resolved many disputes, people began to study the cause of all this. Of course, Koushirou is also one of them. As evolution is understood more and more, the obstacles that stand in the way of evolution come to light. For example, this is also the reason why the Dark Masters are extremely powerful, and this is also briefly mentioned in the novel version of Digimon Adventure. However, where does the force that hinders evolution come from? It seems to come from extraterrestrial sources. In order to find out the reason, we first needed to investigate the moon, so Yamato and Gabumon were chosen. Unlike ordinary investigations, no one knows the dangers of forces that impede evolution. Not all Digimon that become human partners can evolve into a complete Ultimate form. Digimon must have high combat capabilities and rich experience, and they must not be too big to be transported to the universe. In some cases, they must be able to travel in space. activities, so Yamato, who has such a Digimon as his partner, is one of the first suitable candidates. On the moon, Yamato said, "Next time it will be Jupiter." This was a tribute to "2001: A Space Odyssey" and wanted to show that this part is all about evolution. Before graduating from medical school, Joe senpai was responsible for the rear support of Taichi and the others, and participated in the activities of Doctors Without Borders in both the real world and the digital world. Sora, Mimi, and Hikari's final career was to ask female script writers to provide opinions. Before that, they must have supported them in the areas they were good at, such as the clothing and food of the children they were responsible for protecting. Among the juniors who were still students when Taichi and his friends officially started their activities, there was Daisuke who still wanted to eat delicious food everywhere. In response to the increasing number of crimes involving Digimon every year, Ken volunteered to join the police Digimon Countermeasures Section established at that time in order to prevent others from making the same mistakes he made. Watching Ken's activities, Iori realized that there was more to evil than just hatred, so he became a lawyer. Miyako and Takeru also have many other things to do, so they will wait for another opportunity to talk about it. We considered these plot points before finalizing the script. When I was working on the previous film that is now being released, I gave the producers a few months of handouts and simulations of who would be doing what in the 2010s, as well as simulations of the world situation, but none of it was used in the end. . seki P, who was talking in the chat room, was also present at the time. He must have heard that I said that the world would not be peaceful. Didn’t he remember it? As I said before, the purpose of this article is just to make it clear that the final scene of Episode 02 was made with many factors in mind. How the subsequent films were made is irrelevant. Maybe I will write more about Digimon Adventure and 02 at that time, but that's it for now.

#digimon adventure 02 #digimon adventure #sora takenouchi #yamato ishida #taichi yagami #koushiro izumi #mimi tachikawa #joe kido #takeru takaishi #hikari yagami #daisuke motomiya #ken ichijouji #miyako inoue

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ivygrowsc · 2 months

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America Ferrera's breakthrough career

I just want to point out that this woman has delivered 2 cinematic, historical, browsing, impeccable speeches about the frustrations I feel about being a woman. And that actress of course is the one and only America Ferrera herself. Let's talk about her debut role in the movie — Real Women Have Curves. The 2002 independent film based on the play by Josefina Lopez is one of my all-time favourite movies I have watched in my lifetime. And if you somehow know this movie through another suspicious Greta Gerwig connection, I implore you to watch this. The movie was directed by Patricia Cardoso. At the time when it was released, America Ferrera had already filmed another movie but this movie debuted first putting her on the map. She was only 17 years old! Josefina López wrote the play when she was 18 years old. In 2019 it was the first Latina directed film to be included in the National Film Registry at the library of Congress. Taking inspiration from her real life, Josefina wrote Real Women Have Curves about Ana, mostly centered on her relationship with her mother Carmen, played by Lupe Ontiveros. This movie is touted, not only for its representation of women in their real bodies, it also delivered a warm and loving portrayal of Latina families and neighborhoods in Royal Heights and East Los Angeles. Again this isn't a time where Latinas, even today, are represented in a full and nuancent light. So to not only have this Latina family but to have them placed in East Los Angeles which has been criminally and stereotypically portrayed as "dangerous", really meant something and still means something today. And the message of that film being "there's so much more to me than my weight". I think this might serve as a comfort watch for many women around the world.

I don't understand how we were made to believe as children, that America Ferrera was the biggest woman to ever grace our tv screen. The Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants is what I call perfection in cinema. If I ever will have a daughter in the future, she is required to watch this movie. Because every little girl needs to understand what sisterhood and what community is. I feel like girls today are not watching sisterhood displayed on television, or even in movies. It's always these toxic relationship, these toxic friendship — not to say that neither of those can't be toxic and bad, because even within this friend group they all have their own issues with each other, with their families etc. But it's not about the problems, it's how they solve them, how they come together. And I feel like this message should be displayed for the young girls today. And I just love how diverse the friend group is, because nowadays it seems like every teenager I see on tv are like the same skinny, white blondes. If you haven't seen this movie make sure to have a box of tissues nearby because it's going to make you cry.

The dark side of pretty privilige is, you don't get to be funny, intelligent, respected — you just get to be pretty. So I've just finished watching Ugly Betty, I fully recommend, and I realised the only female character who's actually respected within this show, is Betty. If you don't already know the concept, Betty gets hired to be the assistant to the chief. Because he sleeps with his assistants, they decide to get him an "ugly" girl so he won't sleep with her. But she's hired for Mode, which is kind of like Vogue/Cosmo type of magazine. So naturally she gets bullied. They treat her like crap because she doesn't look like the ideal Mode girl. But the crazy thing is, since none of the men want to sleep with her, they actually respect her. They start to treat her like a human being with ideas. Then she becomes one of the most liked people by anyone in their team. On top of that, all of these gorgeous women get treated like absolute crap. No one listens to them, their ideas are not heard, and they're not respected. So it leaves a very clear message: wether you are gorgeous or "ugly", misogyny will still hunt you down and it will catch you. For Betty, men don't look twice her way. They treat her bad from the moment they see her. Just because they don't want to sleep with her, they don't find her attractive. For the beautiful women in the show, like Amanda who is painted as the gorgeous blonde, men only want to sleep with her, and they don't see that she's smart. Go back to watch the show and you'll see how horribly the other women get treated compared to Betty (and they have some good cameos in this show).

As we are reaching the end, we can claim America Ferrera as "that girl". The term is, in my opinion, used for anyone who dresses like a fashionista and acts like the queen they are. But it's much more than that. I think, to achieve that title you have to be also impactful and encourage other women to be what they want to be. America really proved it by playing the Emmy Award winning role of Gloria in Barbie, directed by Greta Gerwig. I think every cis, heterosexual white male should be forced to sit down and watch this movie. The message behind the Barbie movie is about going from being a girl to being a woman. Barbieland is what our childhood felt like; we were safe, naive, independent and everything seemed perfect. The real world is what womanhood actually is. It's scary, sexist, there's pain and we're faced with so many challenges, while still being held to unrealistic expectations by society. "We mothers stand still, so our daughters can look back to see how far they've become". America Ferrera's speech about how hard it is to be a woman, really affected me and made me tear up in the theather. "It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don't think you're good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we're always doing it wrong. You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can't ask for money because that's crass. You have to be a boss, but you can't be mean. You have to lead, but you can't squash other people's ideas. You're supposed to love being a mother, but don't talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman but also always be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men's bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you're accused of complaining. You're supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you're supposed to be a part of the sisterhood." America Ferrera the woman you are, thank you so much for helping me and other women to believe in theirselves. Happy international women's day! <3

#america ferrera #barbie #real women have curves #the sisterhood of the traveling pants #ugly betty #feminism #womens history month #international women's day #margot robbie #greta gerwig #movies #history

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hooked-on-elvis · 4 months

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ELVIS FOR CHILDREN 🎈

youtube

"Cotton Candy Land" from "It Happened at the World's Fair" movie soundtrack (1963).

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Every time I see Elvis singing to children in his movies I picture him singing to Lisa Marie Presley. What would Elvis sing to his baby girl, I wonder. Either it was his own songs, one of those he sang in the movies, or traditional children songs, that would've been so cute to watch! 🥹

But... Elvis' love for children is dated way back to when Lisa probably wasn't even a dream to Elvis.

Elvis' love and affection for his young fans was visible. Any time he met with his fans and there was a tiny new born/infant, a toddler or a child among them, the little one immediately caught Elvis' attention. He is seeing in many, many moments, holding his fans' babies in his arms. Not only his fans babies - I have to say this because you can think he used to hold his fans babies just to 'put up an image' and make himself more likable to his adult audience but it wasn't the case, believe me. Since the 50s (at least, as we have photos to attest only after he begun his music career), Elvis loved children. He was so tender towards any children since always! There's pictures of him with his friends' babies, his family's babies, his coworkers' babies and even playing with his children costars between filming his movies. He was a natural with them. Elvis loved kids and the kids loved Elvis back. ♥

By the way, Elvis also did stand for such vital, important causes for children, over the years! Talking about the Polio vaccine and the 'March of Dimes' campaign, to which EP was one of the voices to, a supporter and a great asset to this cause since the 50s.

Elvis is pictures with Mary Kosloski (photos 1 -2), Joanne Wilson (3) and Robert Marquette (4); all three children victims of the Polio disease and the faces for the March of Dimes campaigns over the late 50s. But that's another story (an excellent and specially lovely one chapter in Elvis Presley's and the world's history).

Is that clear yet? ELVIS LOVED CHILDREN.

Look at how he mimics his little fan's expression. This is a guy who was genuine interacting with people. 🥹

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That being said, did you know there's Elvis albums specially made for children?

Previously I already knew there was (at least) one Beatles album for children ("All You Need Is Love: Beatles Songs For Kids", released in 1999), but now I found out Elvis too has albums specially for his young fans. That is what I truly intend to share with you today. ♥

There's at least two of them: "Elvis Sings for Children and Grownups Too!", released by RCA Victor in 1978 — You can hear the '40th anniversary edition' full album here (Youtube); and "Elvis Sings for Kids" released in 2002.

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"Elvis Sings for Children and Grownups Too!" (CD):

"Elvis Sings for Children and Grownups Too!" (Vinyl... way cooler!):

"Elvis Sings for Kids" (CD)

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There must be more of these "Elvis for Children" albums, but there you go. You got the picture. ⚡

One thing's for sure: If you have a children's birthday party to attend or you're a happy parent or at least has a child in the family (or close friends group) and wants to give them the best gift they will be thankful for, specially when they grow up — believe me, the first CD/VINYL a child is gifted with is unforgettable for them (mine was a Britney Spears' one, 90s child haha, and I love it but I'd rather it have been one of the King's ones, sure) — you can take the opportunity and gift that lucky child with an Elvis Presley album specially designed for them. ♥

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To end this special post, look our baby Elvis, that cute precious little thing! 🥹

#elvis #elvis presley #elvis for children #elvis presley albums #elvis music #elvis fans #elvis fandom #elvis presley music #elvis presley history #♥#Youtube

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the-gay-disney-games · 3 months

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Round 1B: The Emperor’s New Groove (2000) vs. Lilo & Stitch (2002)

Propaganda:

The Emperor’s New Groove:

“That llama boy is gay. Probably genderqueer as well.”

“look at it.”

“just watch the movie it is blindingly obvious from like the first scene (no…no…no…)”

“I mean, i think kuzco is enough propaganda by himself”

“Kuzco is insanely queercoded. There's the way he immediately dismisses any women based on superficial traits, but seems very interested in Kronk. There's the crossdressing scene, which he was very into. And also just look at him.”

“Kuzco is a twink”

“Kuzco is a twink. Eartha Kitt is a gay icon. Kronk...”

“- come on, have you Seen Kuzko? That boy is a Twink.

- every character is So So queer coded in some way

- it's just,,,, so gay”

“You can't tell me those bitches ain't gay. The Llama guy (blanking on the name rn) literally rejected like 5 women rapid fire. Also kronk is queer ty”

“Kuzco is gender envy. Kuzco is gender queer/fluid.”

“That whole scene with Kuzco and Pacha in the restaurant that is all.”

“Kuzco is heavily queercoded in his mannerisms. The start of the movie has him rejecting a line of women as potential marriage candidates, being picky with their appearances. After that, he seems to be interested in asking Yzma about her henchman Kronk. Post llama-turning, he bickers a lot with Pacha but ends up creating a nearly familial bond with him. During a bit where they hide in the restaurant, Kuzco enthusiastically dresses in drag and pretends to be Pacha's wife. Pacha tells the waitress its their honey, with the waitress saying something about it "being brave to come out today", which could have two different meanings. After the movie and Kuzco returns to being a man, he doesn't get together with any woman like most films would. Instead, he finds himself a found family with Pacha, his wife, their two kids, and Kronk. If that's not queer-coded, I don't know what is.”

“Kuzco is so fucking gay and the film is completely unselfconcious and unapologetic. His mannerisms, his complete lack of a female love interest, the way his solution to hiding being a talking llama is to pretend to be Pacha's wife (???). His role model and only parental figure is a dramatic older woman played by Ertha Kit. And it's not just Kuzco; Kronk most certainly has the vibe to him. The casual gender non-conformance is off the charts. The Emperor's New Groove was a Disney movie that skirted under the corporate radar, made with very little input from the company itself. It is one of a kind and there will never be another one like it.”

“-Nothing about Kuzco is straight

-First off, the way he dresses and has incredible fucking hair. Like I know that emperor's were deemed as gods, and having them dress with pure gold jewelry and high quality clothing was a must.BUT STILL, HE PULLS IT OFF

-the scene were he turns down all of the women who were there for one of them to be his wife...BRO HE WAS SO SASSY AND SAVAGE AS HE COMMENTED ON THEIR APPEARANCES, TELLING THEM THINGS LIKE THAT THEY DON'T PULL OF THAT HAIRCUT AND SHIT LIKE THAT

-Don't even get me started on the diner scene with Pacha

-Twink....I will not elaborate”

“:)”

Lilo & Stitch:

“Pleakley and jumba are queer. I will fight people about this. And then they joined the found family to end all found families and co-parent with Nani. Change my mind ( you can't)”

“Jumba and Pleakley are MARRIED and you cannot tell me otherwise”

“The aliens are gay.”

“Trans icon Wendy Pleakley and their boyfriend Jumba”

“We stan Pleakley crossdressing”

“this is THE gay movie to me. It’s all about the found family. Stitch was cast out for being an “abomination” but then he found the place where he belongs with people who love him. Pleakley and Jumbaa are literally married”

“Found Family, cross dressing, self love, what else do you need?”

“I know Pleakley only gets to go whole hog on the crossressing in the TV show, but the movie is where he got his start.”

#polls #queerest disney movie tournament #round 1b #disney #the emperor’s new groove #lilo & stitch

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aziraphales-library · 1 year

Note

Hello, hope you're all having a good day! 😊 I wanted to ask if you know of any other fics like Serpents and Pyramids (the shapeshifter Crowley adventure fic)? I know there was one with an Indiana Jones-like Crowley but I lost it. I'm wondering if you know more fics like that? I'm feeling a bit melancholic today, so I wanted to read fics that have that travel-adventure feel.

Thanks so much! ❤️

Hello. We have an #action/adventure tag with fics like this! Here are some more to add to the collection, along with the couple of Indiana Jones AUs (one of which is a work in progress)...

Burning Through the Sky by ausgezeichnet (T)

Crowley, panic-stricken about the end of the world, flees into space in defiance of god and gravity, but Aziraphale won’t let him leave so easily. Will Crowley make the brave choice, and turn back to fight alongside Aziraphale for the planet that has become their home?

Or: Crowley and Aziraphale go on a very strange road trip. Hijinks ensue.

Hell Freezes Over by charliebrown1234 & Turcote (M)

The year is 2002, and Crowley and Aziraphale are sent to Alaska to investigate a decommissioned entrance to Hell. What could possibly go wrong?

The Weight Of The World by entanglednow (T)

At the height of the Roman Empire's power, Crowley meets Aziraphale for lunch in Pompeii. He's eager to share some of the famed street food the city has to offer, but the ash falling from the mountain to the North is steadily growing thicker.

Death is only the beginning by Sherbet_steve (E)

In 1925 Cairo was already a city so old that the stars had changed their position in the sky since it was born. The strange, mysterious, wonderful city was full of every form of life.

(Or the remake of the 1999 mummy movie)

MAJOR ARCHIVE WARNINGS! Check the tags!

Prisoners of Klondike by lunar_system (M)

“Aziraphale?” Crowley asked, dangling upside down on Aziraphale’s shoulder as he made his way through the snowy forest, “Is this really necessary?"

“It’s a bit late to change my mind now, Crowley dear. Don’t you think?”

When the snow thaws in the spring of 1897, old rules are broken and dreams come true. Aziraphale is assigned to work as a prospector, while Crowley spreads torment in the nearest city as a dance hall girl. In a flash of anger, Aziraphale kidnaps Crowley to his claim.

Adventure and pining in the snowy scenery of the last great gold rush.

The Treasure of Palenque by ImprobableDreams900 (T)

Having just crossed the Atlantic, the anthropologist Aziraphale finds himself in need of a local guide to take him through the Mexican jungle to the ancient Maya city of Palenque. Luckily, the services of one A. J. Crowley are available.

Azira Fell and the Apocalypse Scroll by miraworos (E) (WIP)

The hunt is on for a mysterious and deadly scroll with the power to topple the world into chaos. Will Dr. Azira Fell, professor of Egyptology, find it in time to prevent the impending apocalypse? Or will an evil organization bent on destroying civilization find it first? To have even a chance at saving the world, he'll need to rely on the wily Anthony J. Crowley, professional guide and adventurer. But can Azira trust the inscrutable explorer, or will he lose his heart along with his life?

And the fic that you mentioned that everyone knows and loves...

Serpents and Pyramids by boredom (E)

Ever since he was young, Ezra Fell dreamed of adventure. He dreamed of far off destinations and dashing heroes. He dreamed of danger and excitement. He dreamed of exploration and romance. Now, as an adult, his life is much less exotic locales and much more boring political dinner parties with his fiancé, Gabriel Messenger. But a chance meeting with a literary agent might be his last chance at the adventure he sought as a child.

Gabriel would surely support him.

Right?

And he could never fall for the brash and abrasive Mr. Anthony J. Crowley.

Right?

It was just one silly little trip to find a silly little amulet in Egypt.

Right?

- Mod D

#good omens #ineffable husbands #action/adventure #major archive warning #mod d

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the-rewatch-rewind · 11 months

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Hello and welcome back to the Rewatch Rewind! My name is Jane, and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most frequently rewatched movies in a 20-year period. Today I will be discussing number 22 on my list: RKO’s 1938 screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby, directed by Howard Hawks, written by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde, based on a story by Hagar Wilde, and starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.

Paleontologist David Huxley (Cary Grant) has a lot going on. He’s about to marry Alice Swallow (Virginia Walker). The final bone to complete the brontosaurus skeleton he’s been assembling for four years has just been found. And the wealthy Mrs. Carlton Random (May Robson) is considering a million-dollar donation to his museum. But while David is golfing with Mrs. Random’s lawyer, Alexander Peabody (George Irving), his ball gets mixed up with that of zany, scatterbrained Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn), who leads him on a series of misadventures involving wardrobe malfunctions, a thieving dog, trouble with the law, and two leopards.

When my mom was starting to introduce me to Old Hollywood, she got Bringing Up Baby from the library and said something along the lines of, “I don’t particularly like this one, but you probably will.” And, um…that was an understatement. I was obsessed with this movie in my early teens. Like, to an embarrassing degree. I quoted it constantly. For example, whenever there was a curb or other uneven surface, I had to walk along it with one leg higher than the other in reference to the part when Susan loses the heel of one of her shoes and says, “I was born on the side of a hill.” I’m pretty sure I had watched it a few times in 2002 before I started keeping track; then I saw it five times in 2003, twice in 2004, and three times in 2005. And then as I got older, I started to cringe about my initial enthusiasm, and to listen to people I knew who didn’t like it. I watched it once in 2008, once in 2013, once in 2014, once in 2016, and then I decided I liked it again, so I saw it twice in 2018, twice in 2021, and once in 2022.

This movie flopped in its initial release, but its reputation has grown over the years, and it’s now generally considered to be the definitive screwball comedy, one of the greatest comedic films ever made, and according to some, one of the greatest films of all time of any genre. And yet, many of the people I know in real life who have seen it don’t like it – apart from my brother; I could always count on him to watch it with me. I think a lot of people find it too unhinged and chaotic and frustrating – and, to be fair, they are correct in that assessment. But it happens to be unhinged and chaotic and frustrating in all the right ways for me. I totally get that it’s not for everyone, and I think it does tend to be over-praised now, perhaps to overcompensate for the lukewarm response it generated in 1938. Back then, Howard Hawks attributed the box office failure to the fact that there were no normal characters in the film, so there was nobody for the audience to identify with. And maybe that is the problem. Perhaps the people who don’t like this movie are too normal for it, and the reason I enjoy it is because I have never been normal.

I think especially when I was young, I saw a lot of myself in both David Huxley and Susan Vance, even though they are pretty much opposites. David is mild-mannered and socially awkward, which is how I tend to be around people I don’t know very well. He also has a fairly passive role in the story; lots of things happen to him, while he’s unwillingly along for the ride, and that was definitely how I perceived my life at the time when I was most into this movie. Susan, on the other hand, is outgoing and self-assured when she shouldn’t be, and she frequently prattles on to the point of obnoxiousness, which is how I tend to be around people I’m comfortable with – again, even more so when I was younger. The fact that I’m basically a combination of the two leading characters is not something I consciously noticed until recently, but I think it explains a lot. Like why I find this movie comforting when it seems like I should find it irritating. I truly cannot overemphasize how ridiculous this movie is. Nothing about it makes any sense, which normally would bother me, but the thing is, it’s clearly not supposed to make sense. David refers to his skeleton as a brontosaurus, when at the time most paleontologists considered them the same as an apatosaurus (although recently that’s been called into question again). The final bone he’s waiting for is the “intercostal clavicle” which would be a shoulder bone in between the ribs, which…is not a thing in any animal that I know of. And the main leopard, Baby, is introduced to the story because Susan’s brother sent him to her from Brazil, which means either the brother or the leopard was very lost, since leopards are native to Africa and Asia. These factual errors introduced early in the story help set the tone for the nonsense that’s about to ensue, and oh boy is there a lot of nonsense. I mean, not that there isn’t a story at all; there definitely is, and the plot is relatively easy to follow. It’s just absolutely bonkers. Nobody would wind up in jail for trying to get a leopard off a roof, after mistaking it for a different leopard. But it’s very funny to see what would happen if they did. Ultimately, this movie is just trying to be a comedy, and it very much succeeds at that. Most of the movie is witty dialogue between wacky characters in ridiculous situations – basically my favorite brand of humor. There is also excellent physical comedy, including lots of falling down, which normally I’m not a huge fan of, but for some reason this movie’s brand of falling humor works for me. It’s a fun silly movie that is clearly not meant to be taken seriously. And I would argue that its central romance isn’t meant to be taken seriously either.

Because this movie has a male and a female lead, predictably they end up together. But the thing is, I don’t believe that David and Susan truly have romantic feelings for each other. After they have run into each other a few times, Susan asks a psychiatrist she’s stumbled upon what he would say about a man who follows a woman around, and when she talks to him, he fights with her. Now, this is an extremely inaccurate representation of what has been happening – first she took over his golf ball, then she stole his car, then she dropped an olive causing him to slip and fall on his hat. He’s not just randomly picking fights with her; he has reasons to be upset with her. But based on what she said, the psychiatrist tells her, “The love impulse in men frequently reveals itself in terms of conflict.” That leads Susan to conclude that David must be in love with her, and she then decides that she is also in love with him. Which very much sounds like the behavior of someone who does not understand romantic attraction. Throughout the rest of the movie, Susan keeps coming up with ways to prevent David from leaving, which she thinks is because she’s in love with him, but comes across to me as a lonely person desperate for a friend. David spends most of the movie trying to get away from Susan. He does help her resolve some of the situations that she gets herself into, but mostly because she’s either tricked or trapped him. At one point, he tells her, “In moments of quiet, I’m strangely drawn toward you, but there haven’t been any quiet moments,” implying that he is not, in fact, drawn toward her at all. He does care about her wellbeing in spite of himself, but that doesn’t automatically imply romantic feelings. At the climax, when David is trying to fight off the wild leopard that has been mistaken for the tame Baby, he urges Susan to run, and she says, “No, I won’t leave you, I love you!” and he just responds with an unpleasantly shocked, “WHAT?!” Granted, at the end, David confesses to Susan that in hindsight, the time he spent with her was the most fun he’s had in his whole life, to which she replies, “That means you must like me a little bit,” and he says, “It’s more than that! I love you, I think!” But then she accidentally breaks the dinosaur skeleton that he’s spent four years working on, and before he recovers his power of speech, she says, “Oh, David can you ever forgive me? You do? And you still love me!” and she embraces him, and he just goes, “Oh dear,” and hugs her back, and then the movie ends without even remotely convincing me that they’re really in love. I think the psychiatrist’s suggestion combined with amatonormativity has convinced them that they were thrown together by fate and destined to fall in love, so they decided that that was what had happened without really feeling it. The characters strike me as being better suited for friendship than romance, and I hope they discover that after the events of the film. I can see them meeting up every once in a while for more absurd adventures, but I feel like they would destroy each other if they tried to live together.

Now, could this all be me projecting my aromanticism onto these characters so I could relate to them even more? Absolutely. But there’s something indisputably queer about this movie that is definitely not all in my head. These characters are just so fascinatingly quirky that they can’t possibly all be straight allos. Apparently the script had scenes of David and Susan declaring love for each other in the middle that Howard Hawks cut during production, which implies that the director agreed with me that the leads weren’t intended to be too into each other that way. And of course, there’s That One Line. If you’re at all familiar with this movie, you probably know the one I mean, but for those who don’t: after they take Baby the leopard to Susan’s aunt’s country house in Connecticut, Susan convinces David that he needs to take a shower before he can go back to New York to marry his fiancée, and while he’s bathing she takes his clothes and sends them into town to be cleaned, so David won’t be able to leave. When he gets out of the shower, he has nothing to put on but a frilly woman’s bathrobe. Then Susan’s aunt (who also happens to be Mrs. Carlton Random, but he doesn’t know that yet) enters the house and asks who he is, to which he replies, “I don’t know, I’m not quite myself today.” And then when she demands to know why he’s wearing the feminine robe, he can’t come up with a good explanation, so he bursts out, “Because I just went GAY, all of a sudden!” This was an ad-lib by Cary Grant that somehow made it into the film and is now probably its most famous line. At the time, the word “gay” was being used by the homosexual community to refer to themselves, but that use had not entered mainstream consciousness yet, obviously, or the censors wouldn’t have allowed it in the movie. Most uses of “gay” in old films were clearly meant in the “lighthearted, carefree” sense, or were at least ambiguous enough that they could mean that, but in this context, that definition doesn’t really make sense. I don’t like forcing labels onto real people, but it does seem like Cary Grant was probably bisexual, and therefore it’s reasonable to assume that he would have been familiar with the less common definition. Of course, David is saying this sarcastically; he’s wearing the feminine robe because that was the only thing available to wear when he got out of the shower – it has nothing to do with his sexuality or gender presentation. But the idea that the character would be familiar with that use of the word “gay” raises some interesting questions.

In addition to Cary Grant, it’s also been widely speculated that Katharine Hepburn was not straight. She certainly was at least somewhat gender-nonconforming, frequently wearing pants at a time when that wasn’t socially acceptable for women. Susan Vance is one of her more feminine-dressing characters, and she doesn’t say anything about being gay, but right after that scene, when she hears that David is looking for clothes in her brother’s old room, she cries, “If he gets some clothes, he’ll go away, and he’s the only man I’ve ever loved!” I’m told that making it to 30 without having loved someone of the opposite sex is not a typical straight, alloromantic experience. So even if my initial theory is wrong and David and Susan are attracted to each other romantically, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that they’re some form of queer. And as for David’s fiancée, Alice, she’s not in much of the movie, but she makes it clear that her marriage to David is going to be more of a business arrangement than a romance. She has no interest in a honeymoon or children, insisting that the dinosaur skeleton will be their child, and like, I know she was probably meant to be a stereotypically frigid geeky girl with glasses, and it’s harmful to imply that women can either have brains or heart, but at the same time “why would we need to have sex when we have a dinosaur skeleton” is such an iconic ace attitude that I can’t help but admire her. Anyway, she breaks up with David after Mrs. Carlton Random finds out who he is and decides not to donate her million dollars to a museum that employs someone as unhinged as him, but I hope Alice finds happiness, preferably with another asexual dinosaur enthusiast. Most of the other characters also seem at least somewhat queer – Constable Slocum and his assistant Elmer kind of seem like they’re in a relationship with each other, for instance, and Major Applegate doesn’t seem very straight either. All of this might have been completely unintentional, but what the heck, in honor of Pride month, I’m declaring that every character in this movie is somewhere under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella. This is my podcast and I make the rules.

Bringing Up Baby was reportedly very difficult to make. Production ended up taking 40 days longer than scheduled and costing $330,000 over budget. Part of that was because Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn kept cracking each other up and ruining takes, and because Howard Hawks had a fairly leisurely attitude on set, sometimes cancelling shooting early to take the cast to the races. They also had to deal with animals, which is always tricky. In modern films there are usually multiple animals playing the same character, but in this movie they only had one Leopard, named Nissa, who played both Baby and the vicious circus leopard. Katharine Hepburn seemed to enjoy working with the leopard, and she wasn’t afraid of it even though it did almost attack her at one point. But Cary Grant was terrified of Nissa, so most of his scenes with a leopard were either filmed with his stand-in, or his part and the leopard’s part were filmed separately. The visual effects were fairly advanced for 1938, and even though you can sometimes tell that the actors and the leopard weren’t actually together, it works well enough that you won’t really notice unless you’re watching for it. There’s also a dog named George who steals and buries the intercostal clavicle, and that dog was played by the famous Skippy, who had also played Asta in the first few Thin Man movies and appeared in a different Cary Grant movie called The Awful Truth. I haven’t heard any stories about how Skippy behaved on the Bringing Up Baby set, but I assume he was very professional.

Although the film’s box office failure did nothing to help Katharine Hepburn’s floundering film career in the late 1930s, I personally feel like it represents a significant turning point in her acting abilities. There’s a staggering difference between her pre-Bringing Up Baby performances and her post-Bringing Up Baby performances. Early in her career she was extremely overly dramatic, and while some of those films were still fairly good, many are painfully unwatchable. The story goes that initially, she wasn’t very good as Susan Vance either. She kept trying too hard to be funny, which ruined the comedy. Unable to get through to her himself, Howard Hawks asked Vaudeville veteran Walter Catlett to show her what she was doing wrong, and Hepburn found him so helpful that she asked Hawks to cast him in the movie so he’d be around to give her more pointers. So Walter Catlett played Constable Slocum, and Katharine Hepburn learned how to do comedy. Her character is relentlessly annoying and over-the-top ridiculous, but Hepburn commits. The knowledge that she needed help to get there in no way detracts from the brilliance of her performance. She plays everything Susan does as if it’s the most logical, natural thing in the world, and that’s what makes the movie work. If Susan was aware of how silly she was, the whole thing would have fallen apart. We all know that I love Cary Grant, and I do greatly enjoy his performance here, too, and I think they play off each other very well, but I feel like it’s mainly Hepburn’s performance that has compelled me to keep revisiting this film. As a young person, I related to certain things about Susan and wished I could be as carefree and self-assured as she was, although maybe a little less obnoxious. Now I relate to her less – I wish I had half her energy – but I still find her antics amusing. And it’s also fun to see how much better her acting got after this movie. Clearly she took Catlett’s lessons to heart, and combined them with her natural talent and determination and hard-working spirit to fully become the force to be reckoned with that she’s remembered as.

There is so much more I could say about Bringing Up Baby, like how much I love the scene when Susan pretends to be a gangster to get out of jail, but I’m worried I would just end up quoting the whole movie if I kept going, so I think I’ll wrap it up here. Thank you so much for listening, whether you love this movie, hate this movie, don’t have a strong opinion about this movie, or have never seen this movie. I appreciate you all so much! This will be my last solo episode for a while, as I have guests lined up for the next three episodes, so stay tuned for some fun conversations. Next up is the fifth and final film I watched 19 times while keeping track. As always I will leave you with a quote from that next movie: “A date! What’s a date?”

#bringing up baby #cary grant #katharine hepburn #howard hawks #the rewatch rewind #tldr nobody in this movie is straight

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